When 32 people were shot and killed by a deranged gunman at Virginia Tech in 2007, the quest for preventive measures was renewed with greater vigor.

The Congress -- whose job is supposed to include helping protect the American people -- sat on its hands.

When Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head and six other people, including a 9-year-old girl, were killed in Tucson, Ariz., in 2011, there were expectations that Congress would finally act. After all, one of their own had nearly died and had suffered permanent debilitating injuries.

Yet America's top leaders failed to do a thing.

When the shocking movie theater attack in Aurora, Colo., in 2012 took the lives of 12 people and injured 58 others, the country stood ready for action. Enough was enough.

But not for Congress, which continued to display a stunning lack of courage and compassion.

When 20-year-old Adam Lanza stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on Dec. 14 and massacred 20 beautiful little children and six brave educators with weapons of war, America reacted with anger and heartbreak. This was perhaps the most heinous of all the mass shootings, and certainly now the nation's leaders would act.

But not this Congress.

On Wednesday, a majority of U.S. senators voted in favor of legislation to expand gun-purchase background checks, 54-46, but by bizarre Senate rules, 60 votes are required to pass a bill. Nearly every Democrat voted in favor, and nearly every Republican voted against, so you know which party cares more about the American people.

It seems incomprehensible, but despite the horrifying deaths at Sandy Hook, despite overwhelming public support for the bill, despite the entreaties of the families of gun-violence victims, despite the disgraceful carnage of 30,000 gun-related deaths every year, the U.S. Senate thumbed its nose at those families and the American people.

What a contrast those senators provided to the brave souls who two days earlier put others' welfare ahead of their own in Boston.

On Monday, dozens of first responders and average citizens heroically rushed to the scene of the Boston Marathon bombing, courageously risking their own lives to help strangers who had been wounded.

On Wednesday, 46 U.S. Senators turned their backs on the families of shooting victims and the general public and fled the other way into the arms of the National Rifle Association.

That is disgusting. It is despicable. It is outrageous.

How could this happen?

Three words: guns, politics, money.

The U.S. is a great country in many ways, but it has a twisted fixation with guns and violence and consequentially has the most gun-related deaths of any modern, civilized nation.

Politics are at the heart of this, too.

Make no mistake about it: Many officials care more about their own re-election than they do about making this a safer country, and they fear the NRA and primary challenges from right-wingers more than they care about doing their job.

Behind all of this stands the NRA, the shameless, ruthless lobbyist for the gun industry, which has a vested financial interest in blocking any anti-gun bills.

The NRA used falsehoods and scare tactics to propagandize the background check issue and to threaten senators to vote with the gun lobby.

And on Wednesday, the NRA won. The American people lost.

What this country really needs is truly comprehensive action -- a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity magazine clips, much-improved mental health treatment and the destigmatization of mental illness, universal background checks, and efforts to change the culture of violence.

Nonetheless, the bill before the Senate would have been a step in the right direction.

The Senate vote was a major setback, but those of us who care cannot give up.

The families of the victims of Sandy Hook, who have handled themselves with such class and dignity through extremely trying times, have vowed to keep fighting.